(And how often do you get to say that?)
Worker in a plastics factory complains that the time clocks are not located in the area where workers put on and take off protective clothing, with the result that the workers do not get paid for their time changing clothes, as the law requires.
Worker gets fired and brings lawsuit claiming that company retaliated against him for his complaints. Lower court says his complaints weren’t “in writing,” therefore employer wins.
Supreme Court says worker’s complaints did not have to be in writing — oral complaints sufficient.
From the winning attorneys’ press release
WASHINGTON, DC — (Marketwire) — 03/22/11 — On March 22, 2011, the United States Supreme Court handed down an opinion in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., 563 U.S. __ (2011). In the majority opinion by Justice Breyer, the Court held that an employee who orally complains to his or her employer about a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) is protected from retaliation at the hands of the employer.
The United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin had held that Mr. Kasten’s complaints to his employer about violations of the FLSA did not protect him from retaliation because they were oral rather than in writing. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed that decision.
The Supreme Court reversed the Seventh Circuit. In reaching its conclusion, the Court considered the broad remedial purposes of the FLSA, which is the federal law which sets forth substantive wage, hour and overtime requirements for American workplaces. The Court reasoned that the FLSA, which was passed during the Great Depression, would not have been intended to protect only workers who complain in writing, since many of the most vulnerable American workers at the time were illiterate. As the Court asked rhetorically in its opinion, “Why would Congress want to limit the [FLSA’s] enforcement scheme’s effectiveness by inhibiting use of the Act’s complaint procedure by those who would find it difficult to reduce their complaints to writing, particularly illiterate, less educated, or overworked workers?”
The vote was 6-2, Kagan did not participate, Scalia and Thomas dissented.
Opinion is here.
I’m wondering if the attorneys for the employer were really, really, really unprepared.
Or maybe the law is just really, really, really clear and there’s no way for Alito to pull a stunt as he did with Ledbetter v. Goodyear.
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p>Still it is a great decision!
Roberts’ father made his trade as a highly respected negotiator between labor and management for US Steel during a very contentious era right after the War when price controls were lifted alongside many tariffs. He was always well respected by both and may have endued in his son a somewhat pro-labor viewpoint in a lot of cases on the circuit and now on the SCOTUS. Robert’s most impassioned argument about gutting campaign finance reform came out of protecting organized labor from decline and allowing its members to form free associations to lobby limited only by their level of support. Not saying I agree, just saying Roberts has been surprisingly pro-labor. Alito is also more of a wild card than the two originalists, siding with animal rights and human decency against unlimited free speech in two important 8-1 cases (most recently Snyder v Phelps). He is definitely his own man and hopefully the racist Scalito attacks can finally stop. Not saying I agree with his views or find him the best choice, but he was definitely qualified to serve and he has been far more unpredictable than thought. His first real case he sided with the liberals and saved a death row inmates life in Missouri. Also he and Scalia are the most pro-defendant justices consistently on lawful searches cases, while the liberal pragmatists tend to favor local law enforcement, a stark reversal of many of the Warren courts compositions (left wingers like Douglas And Marshall famously led the way to Miranda rights and court appointed attorneys in Gideon v Wainright and Miranda v Arizona and ‘conservatives’ like Burger and Powell were liberal on everything but law and order issues).
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p>I am hoping the next few appointees really shake up and the court and are a lot more interesting. I want more ideological diversity, more academic diversity, and experience diversity-all of which are far more important than the 20th century categories of gender and race. Give us some proud alumns of schools West of the Mississippi, state schools, and people who had experience in government and public service outside of the judicial branch. I want a hard core libertarian, a true social democrat, a few more O’Connor moderates, and a Hugo Black style progressive textualist. I am sick and tired of the originalists v liberal pragmtists Breyer school v Scalia school. Its a tired fight and both sides are so often wrong.
Though keep in mind that while ideological, experience, academic, etc. diversity in the Court may be great, we’re still only talking about nine positions. There’s only so much diversity to go around.
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p>It almost makes one wonder whether it would be better if the Supreme Court stayed out of high-profile political disputes more than it does.
and I am not surprised with Thomas and Scalia, but as the prior comment stated it must have really, really clear
The decision in Matrixx is another example of a “pro-little-guy,” “anti-business,” decision (although the plaintiffs were investors, the decision is still a blow to defendants in securities fraud cases). I put these things in quotes because I don’t believe a judge sits around and says, “how can I help business?” or “how can I help the little guy?”
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p>TedF
Linda Greenhouse has a column in today’s NYT called “A Surprising Supreme Court.” Both the Kasten (civil rights) and Matrixx (securities fraud) cases that were mentioned earlier in this thread are included in the surprises.
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p>Her biggest surprise was that (excluding cases that were unanimous) Scalia and Thomas have voted apart more than together so far this term. Wild.
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I was going to post this. As an aside I am very happy Greenhouse is now considered opinion her “analysis” for years reeked of predetermined bias, not that her reporting skills aren’t top notch.
…you are a fool not to put something in writing even if the employee doesn’t. To keep things from devolving into a he said/they said, I always send an email or note, copy to employee folder, saying – Per our converstation today…
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p>Protection cuts both ways, and to not do this when there were REPEATED complaints is dumb.
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p>DISCLOSURE – my brother works for St. Gobain in Worcester, but for an abrasives rather than a plastics concern. And he would fall into the put-upon worker category rather than the French off-shore owner plutocrat one.
… and actually decreases the value of the conversation, but there’s no rating for ‘less than worthless’…
…in this case not even necessarily disagreeing?
… and actually decreases the value of the conversation, but there’s no rating for ‘less than worthless’…
Calling that worthless seems a little strange.
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p>I guess it detracted from the conversation about how the Court decides cases based on a consensus understanding about who the “little guy” is. Or something.
On reading your summary, I thought “That sounds like a killer argument! How could Scalia and Thomas have come up with a plausible dissent??” But then I looked at the opinion, and see that their dissent doesn’t agree with the lower court either. Scalia wrote the dissent, and he doesn’t try to make any distinction between written or oral complaints:
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The phrase the court was interpreting was “filed a complaint,” and the question was whether “filing” could be oral as well as written. Up until the time the case reached the Supreme Court, everybody was assuming that the employer was the place the complaint would be filed. At the Supreme Court level, the employer made the argument for the first time that “filed” meant with an agency or court, not the employer. Rarely are winning arguments made for the first time at the Supreme Court level.
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p>So of the various interpretations of the phrase, Justices Scalia and Thomas picked the one that would be most damaging to employees. I guess not everything about this court term is a surprise.
…but what is the merit argument for allowing this time? Obviously if the law requires it then that has to be followed and SCOTUS decided rightly. However, on the merits I don’t see myself complaining that I need to arrive 5-10 minutes early to get my clothes changed to clock in on time.
Plastics manufacturing is dangerous work. Should workers in nuclear power plants also not get paid for the time it takes to protect themselves?
I just don’t see a change a clothes as worth making (literally in this case) a federal case over.
yourself being screwed out of 5-10 minutes of your own time.
The “no big deal” attitude is why unions have a reputation for inflexible rules. They have to be inflexible, because management will try to shave a small advantage here, and another one there, unless the union draws a line in the sand. To see how that works when there is no union protecting workers, look into Wal-Mart’s management practices.
I’ve had a job where the rule was be ready to work at x time. How you make sure that happens is your responsibility. Yes, this does make unions appear inflexible and is not good PR for them.
Let’s say you worked in a deep mine, something like the Sunshine in Idaho when it was in operation. I knew someone who worked in that thing. Getting down and up from his level took three hours a day in a cage elevator. Three hours. Now, technically, he wasn’t doing any work during that time; he was preparing, in a manner of speaking, to do his work. Should he be paid?
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p>Changing into required clothing is preparing to do work in much the same manner as riding a cage elevator down 5,000 feet below the earth’s surface. The work cannot be down without it; therefore, the time is on the clock.
Three hours vs. ten minutes is quite a jump. Plus the elevators are probably on a schedule and you need to be there at a certain time in order to catch the elevator. When I worked at the National Park Service we were required to be in uniform. We were also required to be on duty by a certain time, dressed and all. I wore my uniform to and from work, but some of my colleagues wore civilian clothing and changed at work. We would both still be required to be dressed and ready when our shift started. I suppose it’s a difference of degrees and I’m not sure I can come up with a hard and fast rule for it.
That’s the distinction. It’s hard and fast, plain and simple.
Protective clothing is mandated and enforced by federal and state law, depending on state and OSHA requirements, in order to do the job. Not so for a uniform.
usually for identification purposes and not a matter, per se, of law and occupational safety.
…though since I was talking National Park Service, a federal agency, there may be technically be a federal law requiring wearing a uniform, but I realize that’s not quite the point here.
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p>I guess it comes down to what the employer says your time obligations are. If the requirement is, “Be on the premises at 9AM and we’ll give you a reasonable amount of time to change,” the clock should start at 9AM. Likewise if the requirement is, “Be ready to start your shift at 9AM, but it’s up to you how to make it happen,” the clock should also start at 9AM.
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p>To be honest I’m not a big fan of punch clocks anyway. It’s too rigid and makes me feel like a machine. I had a job once that did not use clocks when I started, then later changed to a clock system. My reaction was, “What’s the matter – don’t you trust us?”
If I don’t have it, I may be in contempt of court. But nobody ever paid me to put it on.
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p>In tend to agree with Christopher, that these cases are very bad optics, because people everywhere see “getting paid to get ready for work” to be featherbedding.
But if a plastics worker brings in dust or lint, valuable product is ruined. Suiting up for a plastics worker is more like prep work, than just putting on a uniform.
When will you draw the line – during the interview? On your first day at work? If you’re the only one drawing that line, how long do you think you’ll get to do it? This is the nut of collective bargaining. If it’s just Christopher refusing to accept Management’s new cost-cutting policy, then Christopher becomes unemployed. If everyone refuses, the policy becomes unemployed.
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p>I just watched a French movie called Human Resources. It really illustrates the different labor climate between there and here.
…I expect to get paid from the moment I begin my actual work in the AM to the moment I stop in the PM. I would not fuss about preparation in most cases (though see my response to lightiris above). To be clear I think this is a perfectly legitimate issue to raise in collective bargaining. It just wouldn’t be a sticking point for me personally.